Let's Discuss "My Invented Country" and "the Movie Teller"

Let's discuss two short books by Chilean authors in February.

In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today.

The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, Protected content , sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, Protected content , on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

In The Movie Teller, María Margarita, a young woman who lives in a mining town in the heart of the Chilean Atacama desert in the Protected content , has had the gift of telling movies since she was a child.



When a film starring Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper or Charlton Heston, or a Mexican feature packed with songs, arrives in the local village cinema, Maria is sent to watch it. Upon returning she tells the movie to her father, confined to a wheelchair, and to her four siblings, and soon she is telling the movie to a large and impatient public. 

Through this tender story, Hernán Rivera Letelier gives us the magical tale of village cinemas.